The measure of success is the measure of the capacity for achievement. It was on her nursing record in the Civil War that she made her national reputation; on her business record, her world reputation. She was not a Hetty Green in a bank account, for she invested in the field of humanity, not of finance; but her genius shone in handling, unerringly, a great business enterprise, her record far surpassing that of the woman-wizard of Wall Street. By American Presidents, by commanders of armies, by statesmen, by financiers, by her co-workers, without an exception who were with her on fields of war and disaster, she was commended for her business acumen, business methods, and in the results obtained. From previous knowledge, from personal observation at the Galveston flood, from having, within the past five years, spent many months in her Glen Echo Red Cross home, with the accountants who were going through her business records and assisting myself in the work, I speak what I do know.
She did not come into the business world panoplied as from the head of a Jupiter, her record was not temporary camouflage; it is a record of years; nor was it solely through the heart, for other women have hearts. Clara Barton had genius, “the power of meeting and overcoming the unexpected;” had genius for work, and through work comes genius. Her business record is as firmly established as is that of her heart record; as is that of the great “captains of industry” and, as theirs, is based on methods and success, the only known data for such determination. In the use of her approved methods in continuous service for twenty-three years, she was without one record-failure, achieving success under varied and most trying conditions.
It is said of her by one writer, “a woman of great force of character;” by another, from the results accomplished and without prejudice toward womankind in the business world, “one of the world’s greatest personages, for greatness knows no sex;” by another, as shown in her capacity to do things, “she must be classed as a genius, for genius is the intuitive capacity for overcoming insurmountable difficulties.”
Clara Barton’s twenty-three years as the Executive Head of the Red Cross; her collection and distribution of two and one-half millions of money and material; her unanimous election three times to the Red Cross presidency for life, on her business record, is without precedent. She might have been a Merchant Prince; she could teach one of America’s most successful business men on business points; she excited the admiration of all who were acquainted with her business methods. Some day some man or woman may appear as her rival on the horizon of the business world but, up to the present time as an unpaid executive with unpaid helpers, Clara Barton holds the world’s record as Business Manager, in public service.
THE AMERICAN RED CROSS BUILDING, WASHINGTON, D. C.
Dedicated to the Heroic Women of the Civil War.
Cost $800,000.00—$400,000 by Congress; $400,000 by Friends of the Red Cross (Mrs. Russell Sage, $150,000, Rockefeller Foundation, $100,000, James A. Scrymser, $100,000, Mrs. E. H. Harriman, $50,000).
One and one-half million of names were represented on the petition memorializing the 65th Congress to place a Clara Barton tablet in the new Red Cross Building at Washington, D. C.—Corra Bacon-Foster, author of Clara Barton, Humanitarian.
Clara Barton, “Her character eternally crystallized at the base of an enduring foundation and an immortal American destiny—the greatest an American woman has yet produced.”—Hon. Henry Breckenridge, Acting Secretary of War, at the laying of the corner stone of the American Red Cross Building at Washington, D. C., March 15, 1915.
XCII
Honor any requisition Clara Barton makes; she outranks me.
General B. F. Butler.
The Jury passing on the prisoner’s life may in the sworn twelve have a thief or two guiltier than him they try. Shakespeare.